A very quiet night last night, mostly watching my poor hubby wander around feeling sore and stoned.

He had a vein stripped from his leg, which is minor surgery, but still ... They cut a hole in your groin and one at the knee and one at the ankle and then they yank the vein out. Gross, I know.

When he woke up from the general anesthetic he was sick to his stomach, so they gave him gravol and then an hour or two later, they gave him percocet for the pain. At one point, he looked at me with this loopy, far-away look and said "I'm higher than a Port Albery Pine". There's the song-writer in him, huh?

When we got home, I fed him and then tucked him in, since he could hardly keep his eyes open. He woke up about 8 and walked around for a while, which they told him to do to keep the circulation flowing as he heals. Then we snuggled in on the couch and watched Hotel Rwanda (after T injested some more of the lovely percocet).

There's a movie that gives you a lot to think about. It's an amazing story of human courage and morality. This average man, who, in the face of unspeakable horror and atrocity, simple does "the right thing" and saves the lives of about 1200 people, most of whom he's never met before. When asked why he did it afterwards, he said "It was mostly selfish. I knew I couldn't look myself in the mirror again if I didn't try." It always makes me wonder if we all have that in us or not?

It's like the way I felt after seeing Shindler's List. Both amazed at the goodness of human-beings and at the same time, deeply appalled by the awfulness of human-beings. What makes one person capable of selfless acts of kindness and the man (sorry, or woman) next to him capable of such deep acts of cruelty? Actually, I think Don Cheadle says it in the movie, when his wife asks him much the same question and he says "Hatred".

I was thinking a lot about that last night after the movie. How easy it can be to hate people. Because they're different and we don't understand them. They have different skin colour, or different religions or politics, or they have different values or wear different clothes, and on and on. As a species, we "hate" really easily and far too often. I think about how often I, or my friends, say "God. I hate her (or him)." How lightly we toss that around when someone is different in some way from us. We're a very judgmental race, and the worst extension of that little character flaw leads to people who are capable of genocide, I do believe.

The other thing that's hard to take in the movie is realizing that about a million people were slaughtered in Rwanda and the world did nothing. Not like WW2, not like Bosnia. Because they were Africans, no one intervened. It's shameful. And it could happen again any day, in the Sudan or other African countries.

Despite all that, it's a really great movie and everyone should see it. Just don't watch it when you're in the mood for something light and fluffy. But Don Cheadle's performance is A+++++++.